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Links are one of the top search ranking factors on Google. They get you ranked for your target keywords on SERPs. So essentially, one cannot rank without link building, right? Or can you?

According to a poll sent out to Search Engine Journal’s Twitter audience,more than half of the respondents (56%) said that you can’t rank without link building, while 44% said that you can. So link building is still important for you to rank in search pages. But why is the disparity between the can and can’t close enough? Let’s take a look.

Why Links Still Matter

Links are important in bringing traffic to your site. They give your brand exposure and contribute to brand awareness. Based on a study done by Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting, links can and will continue to have a major impact on rankings.

But let’s be honest: creating an effective link building strategy is difficult. It can be costly, time-consuming, and can take a lot of effort. You have to conduct thorough research of your audience and niche. You have to create a targeted promotion strategy. You have to construct compelling messaging for your outreach activities. You have to develop and sustain relationships with those you reach out to.

Link building has also taken on a negative connotation due to Google’s Penguin update and the search engine’s continuous efforts to penalize sites who resort to spammy backlinking activities. The focus now is on quality and relevance of links.

Go Beyond Link Building

There are definitely other link building techniques out there. But instead of concentrating all your efforts on link building, why not explore other methods that can get you to rank? Here are other ways to help you get those much-needed links and boost your exposure:

1. Move from Link Building to Link Earning

Instead of working on building links, go forth and work on earning links. Anna Crowe shares a link earning road map and a few ideas you can try to earn links in this guide to link earning.

2. Focus on Content

Aside from links, content is the other top search ranking factor. But don’t just create content for content’s sake. Create content that is valuable and relevant to your audience, and is something that others will want to share and link to. This post on linkbuilding by Julia McCoy has some great tips on the types of content you can create to grow your online presence.

3. Get on Social

Social media promotion is a must-have strategy these days. Make your presence known online by getting on different platforms. This also allows you to diversify your audience reach. Participate in Twitter chats and Facebook Live events. You can get people to share your content and link to you by connecting with them on social media.

4. Become an Influencer

As an expert on your topic or niche, you have the power to influence people and get them to follow you. If you’re a good writer, you can do guest posting. If you’re a good speaker, you can do radio interviews, podcast interviews, and public speaking. Look for online and offline opportunities to share your knowledge and get your name and expertise out there.

5. Build a Community

Once you’ve built that online and offline following, you now have a community who can promote your brand or product for you. Nurture that community because they can help get your message across and will be essential to making your brand known.

Google has removed the Content Keywords report from Search Console, a feature that has become dated over the years as Google has introduced more efficient technologies.

Content Keywords served a useful purpose back in its day of being the only way to see what Googlebot found when it crawled a website. This was years ago, when Search Console was still known as Webmaster Tools.

Since then, Google has introduced the Fetch and Render tool, which provides a visual representation of what Googlebot sees when it crawls your website. This tool provides much greater information to site owners than what you can learn from keywords alone.

In addition to Fetch and Render, Google’s Search Analytics report has also been introduced in the years following the debut of Content Keywords. Search Analytics is a collection of keywords that a website has shown up for in search results, and is linked to directly from the dashboard of Search Console.

The combination of Fetch and Render plus Search Analytics has more or less rendered Content Keywords obsolete. Google also notes having access to both the Content Keywords and Search Analytics reports led to confusion amongst site owners. For these reasons, it is time to pull the plug on Content Keywords.

In case there was any concern about how Google values keywords following this move, the company reminds they still play an important role in how Google is able to understand and interpret your content:

”The words on your pages, the keywords if you will, are still important for Google’s (and your users’) understanding of your pages. While our systems have gotten better, they can’t read your mind: be clear about what your site is about, and what you’d like to be found for.”

For those surprised by Google’s decision to remove Content Keywords, you can’t say the company didn’t warn you. Google’s John Mueller mentioned back in May, in a Google+ Hangout, that the report would soon be removed from Search Console.

There have been many instances this year of Google giving months of advance notice before making significant changes. A trend which I hope continues into the new year.

When it comes to brick-and-mortar storefronts, local businesses often struggle to compete with neighboring big brands. Statistics show that, even for a well-known local store that’s established a strong relationship with its customers and built a community through the years, having such a neighbor can be detrimental. But what about a newly opened business? Does it have any chance of competing with popular brands? My experience has led me to believe there’s only one way a locally owned business can overcome big competition: it needs to take advantage of local SEO.

Recently, in collaboration with Accuranker, I conducted a survey that touches upon the difficulties local businesses face when trying to become visible in Google’s local results. We analyzed more than 300,000 local SERPs across multiple industries (beauty, medical services, auto services, legal, shopping, etc.) to get a clear understanding of what the chances are for a local site to seem attractive to Google.

One of the more curious insights our research revealed is that the legal services niche is among the most competitive. Sure, this finding isn’t rocket science. In fact, I bet on some level you were aware of this (or at least you had a gut feeling). However, this issue is much more complex than it seems. The legal services niche far surpasses other niches in terms of competition and prices.

Does this mean that the legal services niche falls under radically different rules and requires unique SEO tactics? This is exactly the question I set out to answer, and you’re most welcome to follow me on my little investigation!

Gathering the data for this article

After reading this article, you’ll understand the biggest challenges that any legal website faces when trying to become visible in the SERPs. The data here will help ensure that your future strategies are based on informed decisions. Moreover, you’ll be able to streamline your creative process and find non-standard approaches that will cement your success in the legal industry.

To conduct proper research on what SEO strategies local businesses employ in the legal services niche, I took the following steps:

I made a list of keywords unrelated to any brand (which could hardly be classified as local).

I identified the most competitive places in the US for this industry in order to analyze how legal sites build a presence in this extremely aggressive environment

The first step was simply to do keyword research, which involved a bit more manual work than usual — I tried my best to filter out branded keywords and ones that weren’t relevant to local searches.

With the help of Statista I was able to get a list of the states in America that have the highest employment rates in the legal niche:

This graph shows US states with the highest number of employees in legal occupations in the United States as of May 2014. Source: statista.com

You can see that California, New York, and Florida have the highest number of employees in this industry, hence these locations are the most “densely populated” by law firms and lawyers, and, as a result, the competition in these states should be higher than in other states. After I made a list of the most competitive locations, I was ready to move on to the next step — analyzing the domains that appear in SERPs for the keywords I had previously selected.

Now let’s see what my findings revealed.

The top 5 SEO challenges for the legal niche

The extreme competitiveness of the legal services niche might be explained by the fact that this market generates more than $248 billion USD in revenue (according to a recent report provided by Statista) with only a relatively small number of searches.

To give you a better understanding of the size of the legal services industry in the US, let’s compare it with a bigger market: for instance, if we look at ecommerce, we can clearly see that the revenues generated by the two niches in question are nearly the same (ecommerce sales surpass $256 billion USD), despite the fact that ecommerce traffic share figures are four times greater than in legal services. It’s safe to say that the legal niche has turned out to be a ridiculously competitive market, because it’s an outrageously profitable one. I’m also certain that the success of any SEO activity depends on a deep understanding of how the industry and its major players work.

In the next section, you’ll learn about the main challenges that legal businesses face.

#1. Online legal business are dominating local SERPs

Statistics from an IbisWorld report confirm that the online legal services niche was able to generate $4 billion USD in 2015. Moreover, in recent years this niche has been steadily expanding due to the fact that consumers are interested in getting legal services online. That’s why it doesn’t come as a surprise that a company named Rocket Lawyer generates more than 30,000 searches monthly (according to Google Keyword Planner) by helping users deal with their legal issues online. This number of searches proves that online legal services are gradually becoming popular, and people don’t want to spend their time scheduling an appointment with a lawyer anymore.

Now you’re probably wondering how this trend is affecting local SEO, right?

Knowing that New York, Miami, and Los Angeles are among the most competitive locations for the legal niche, I decided to find out which sites are the most visible in local search results there. I took into account more than 500 different keywords related to legal services and compiled a list of the domains that most appeared most frequently for those keywords. And here are the top three domains that remain visible in local search results in all three cities:

Findlaw.com

Avvo.com

Lawyers.com

After making this list, I double-checked these websites to make sure that all of them belong to the online legal services niche. I also decided to dig deeper and manually checked the top twenty domains that were most visible across all the locations I analyzed, in order to understand what kind of legal services they provide. I found out that 55.6 percent of the sites I analyzed belong to the online legal services niche. That means that local businesses now have to compete not only with global businesses, but also with online legal businesses that, by default, have better positions in SERPs, as the main goal of their business is to increase their online presence by getting more organic traffic from Google.

Apart from the strong presence of online businesses in local organic SERPs, I was struck with the steady visibility of the top twenty websites that appear in local search results in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. The shocking truth I discovered about Google local SERPs is that less than 20 percent of sites were unique across all the studied locations. This means that search results are occupied by global and online businesses in 80 percent of cases. Furthermore, the top three most visible domains remain the same in all three cities, and they are as follows:

Findlaw.com,

Avvo.com, and

Lawyers.com.

I also discovered that all three of these websites belong to the online legal services niche, and, despite SEO visibility, have a good number of backlinks. I am of the opinion that local businesses have no chance of competing with them whatsoever.

As I studied the 20 percent of websites that are unique, two curious cases of locally based businesses caught my eye — Injurylawyers.com and Cellinoandbarnes.com. Let’s take a closer look at these two websites.

From Injurylawyers.com’s “Contact” page, I learned that it operates mostly in Florida. However, I don’t think that the reason it ranks so highly in local search results in Miami is because of its physical presence there. Even at a quick glance, it becomes clear that Injurylawayers.com is ranking so high in local results because of its website’s overall performance. As you can see from the screenshot below, its website has a good number of referring domains, as well as a decent amount of organic traffic:

Source: ahrefs.com

Another site that caught my attention — Cellinoandbarnes.com — has a branch based in New York. The history of this legal company begins over 50 years ago, and without any doubt Cellino and Barnes is a well-known and trusted brand. Plus, Google recognizes it as a brand. The very fact that its brand name is being searched for more than 6,000 times a month speaks volumes about the trustworthiness of this legal company:

All these facts show that Cellinoandbarnes.com’s visibility in New York SERPs is because of the domain’s general performance in Google US organic search results:

Source: spyfu.com

My quick research proves that, in practice, Google doesn’t give priority to NY-based legal companies and still mostly relies on general ranking factors. And it seems obvious now that any online business can easily outperform an offline SMB legal company by increasing the number of backlinks, brand mentions, and site visits it receives.

#3. The local pack is still a saving grace for local businesses

One year ago, Google implemented a major change that dramatically minimized local businesses’ chances of becoming visible in local packs: Google replaced the 7-pack in SERPs with a 3-pack. And I was quite interested to figure out what kinds of businesses now hold these three positions in the legal niche, and whether these results are local.

Despite the fact that local organic SERPs are fully occupied by big online businesses, the local pack still is the best way to remain present in Google for locally based legal companies. My research revealed that 67 percent of sites that appear in local packs for legal services are hyper-local and local. To arrive at this percentage, I analyzed the domains that appear in local packs in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles in terms of their SEO performance in Google US (to do this, I used Serpstat’s Batch analysis tool).

I was also curious what share of online presence the local legal businesses that appeared in the local pack had, along with the breakdown by states. To mark sites as local, I checked their traffic with the help of the Serpstat’s Batch Analysis Tool. (I’d like to note that I find Serpstat’s figures most relevant for such purposes, as they parse raw data from Google US. You can easily spot which sites are global and which are local.) And here’s what I found:

Miami – 60% of legal websites appear in the local pack

Los Angeles – 35% of legal websites appear in the local pack

New York – 15% of legal websites appear in the local pack

This was quite an insight, since I assumed that California would be the most competitive location for the legal niche, because — as you may recall from the beginning of this post — it’s the state most densely populated by law firms. Also, it’s surprising to find New York only at third place in this list. Yet, as you can see, Miami has the greatest number of local sites that are present in local pack. Therefore, I believe that being featured in local search results in New York requires a lot more resources than it does to achieve the same visibility in Miami. And this is something that every SEO expert should be aware of.

#4. You can’t stand out without a site — even in local pack results

It’s a well-known fact that Google’s local pack provides businesses with the opportunity to appear at the top of Google SERPs even without a website. According to my previous research, which I conducted in collaboration with the AccuRanker team, the local pack works much better for less competitive niches. What I tried to clarify here is whether you can stand out in a local pack without a website in such an unconventional and competitive niche as legal services. Unfortunately, no, you cannot.

To prove this, I analyzed 986 local SERPs in order to figure out if legal brands can appear with or without a website. My findings showed that 86 percent of legal businesses that pop up in local packs have a website. This means that even if your business is visible in local packs without a website, in a majority of cases, it’ll be considered by potential clients as less trustworthy, since users usually expect to see a link to a particular domain.

Without a link to a professional-looking website, your business will seem less credible — not only to potential clients, but also to Google. Nevertheless, it’s not unusual for large, global companies to be trusted more than small, local ones. Therefore, small companies need to instill confidence in their potential clients by having a website.

#5. There’s no correlation between a legal website’s ranking number one in a local pack and its number of reviews

I’m certain that every business owner understands the importance of customer reviews. It’s a no-brainer that a level of trust is instantly established when a potential client sees that a local business has reviews. And it definitely increases the likelihood of said client to convert. Also, the very presence of Google native reviews is thought to be among the Top 50 local search ranking factors.

However, this study of legal services has already revealed that there are quite a few peculiar ranking factors that business owners need to keep in mind in order to succeed in this niche. That’s why I was curious to know whether there’s any correlation between a site’s number of customer reviews and its ranking #1 in a local pack.

With the help of the AccuRanker team I was able to get the sum of reviews that show beside each result in local pack. Afterwards, I analyzed more than 2,000 local SERPs in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. And here’s what I found:

There’s no correlation between ranking in the first position in a local pack and your number of reviews.

For instance, in New York local pack results, the companies that appear in the third position have 824 total reviews. Those that appear in the first – 732. Moreover, I noticed a good number of cases in which a company that had a solid number of reviews was ranked in the third position, while a business that hadn’t even been reviewed yet was ranked in the first.

Another striking insight I gained: most legal sites never show their potential visitors more than 2 reviews. Based on this data, I can say that this represents an overall industry trend of a lack of native Google reviews. That’s why Google ranks businesses that haven’t been reviewed so highly. Even if you have a significant number of customer reviews, it won’t help your business rank higher in local pack results.

One final note

Without any doubt, the legal niche presents a lot of unique local SEO challenges that other industries hardly ever face. The high penetration of online legal services into the existing legal market is changing the current business landscape — in particular, it’s drastically affecting local results. Online legal businesses are stealing an outrageous amount of web traffic from local companies, without giving them even a slim chance of ranking as well in local SERPs.

Fortunately, local legal businesses still have priority in local packs, but the highly competitive environment is forcing them to improve their online presence by creating a website. Since a majority of the companies that appear in local packs have sites, your potential clients’ expectations are ratcheting up. In fact, this trend may reinforce searchers’ opinions that businesses without a website are untrustworthy. Furthermore, it seems that Google also prefers to show users local legal businesses that have a site, rather than those that don’t. The only good news is that your number of reviews doesn’t really influence your rankings in local packs.

Still, if a local legal business is interested in attracting clients via the Internet, it shouldn’t hesitate to look for alternative ways of generating traffic in both organic and paid search channels.

The gentleman sitting across the table from me at a crowded lunch spot has what he sees as a workable business idea for a local business, a sound plan to get it off the ground, enough funds to weather the ups and downs of the current business climate in his area, and the determination to stick around long enough to be successful.

However, what he doesn’t have are the answers to three questions pertaining to content marketing for his small business:

“What should I write about?”

“How do I [rank higher in local SERPs?]”

“Do I need to use social media? Will it help my brand?”

My heart breaks a little as he looks down to pick at his salad. Not because I don’t like questions, or because the questions are difficult to answer. They aren’t.

In fact, the answer I gave comes from a slogan i learned of in college and have used repeatedly when attempting to get small brands to see the shortest path to success: “Think globally, act locally.”

The SERPs won’t save you

Every brand wants to be No. 1 in the SERPs, or so they think.

What they really want, however, is to be the No. 1 most-chosen brand.

What ultimately matters in the earliest stages of your relationship with prospects is that they see you in the SERPs, recognize your brand for its quality of service and/or excellent products(s), and reward you with a click.

Far too often, however, local brands think too broadly (often as a result of poor keyword selection) and attempt to rank for terms and/or categories they’ll never be able to consistently rank for. All the while, they ignore low-hanging fruit, such as ensuring their Google My Places is up-to-date, their citations are accurate, and prioritizing reviews on third-party sites.

Worse still, even brands that do commit to these efforts too often ignore creating local-specific pages, which can be a tremendous asset for capturing traffic, leads, and driving conversions for local brands.

Individually, not capitalizing on these areas is bad for brand health; collectively, they amount to leaving the door open to the competition.

Image source

And if you’re a small or midsize business (SMB) owner, your focus must be on closing doors to the competition. To do that you’ll need to use your size and the knowledge of your local service area to your advantage.

As I’m wont to say, it’s simple, but it won’t be easy.

Local SEO to the rescue

A few months, I had the distinct pleasure of getting to work with Local SEO expert Mary Bowling as she prepared for Mozcon Local. During a phone conversation, I shared with her my frustration at seeing local brands get pwned by big brands, in large part because the former has all but given up on the quest to be competitive, even when they have wood to throw on the fire.

She agreed that there some holes SMBs are refusing to expose.

“Big brands do have the resources to dominate in local search, but to a large degree they often won’t spent the money needed to be successful, specifically as it regards local-specific content,” says Bowling, owner of Ignitor Digital, which provides online marketing and Local Search marketing solutions to SMBs. “Often small brands don’t create good content because they don’t think they have the time. But it’s not as complicated as they believe. Also, being that they are the local experts, local-specific content is easier to create than they think and can provide the [perfect vehicle to ward off bigger brands].”

That conversation was the wellspring for discussions I’d later have at Mozcon Local with speakers Mike Ramsey of Nifty Marketing and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. I also had the privilege of interviewing each of them, in addition to Local SEO whiz Phil Rozek of Local Visibility Systems, after the event.

What follows is a post based on the entirety of those conversations, with the goal of answering one question: How can local SMBs better compete with big brands in their respective areas?

Local content is David’s slingshot to Goliath’s plate of armor

One of the toughest parts of working with SMB owners is getting them to realize the vast world around them is actually much smaller than they assume, in at least two key ways:

Big brands with local or regional offices/locations are always a threat for stealing local customers.

Their reach is as limited as their resources, in that while their service area is small, so too is their ability to rank in the SERPs.

That is, unless SMBs use the biggest and best weapon available to them: Local-focused content that makes a priority of using people, personalization and events to help them stave off the typically much stronger competition.

Full disclosure:Nothing related to business pisses me off more than seeing big brands dominate local search queries, when I know smaller brands that provide better service are all around.

Equally frustrating is seeing these small brands try to compete outside their league by relying too heavily on paid search and ignore how effective content marketing can be for their business’s long-term success.

If this sounds like your brand, I implore you to own your local turf by following the three steps outlined below.

#1 — Think quality > quantity

As a business strategist, two questions comes up over and over from SMB owners:

“What should I write about?”

“How often should I post blogs?”

A better question is, “What topics are my prospects most interested in, and how can I write about those topics with the quality necessary to gain and retain their attention?”

The process begins with you thinking less about how often you write and more about how well you write on the topics your prospects and customers care most about.

“If you want to get local content, and get ranking but also customers, think quality over quantity,” says Phil Rozek. “Get your sea legs. Can you create a page that gets rankings but also customers?”

The last point, which I discussed extensively with Rozek via phone, is a very important one.

The key to success for any brand’s content goes well beyond the SERPs, and that applies doubly so for local SMBs, where butts in the door or phone calls are the lifeblood of the business.

The focus, he says, must be on producing content of sufficient quality and relevancy to move the needle, not simply attain eyeballs.

“The goal is to get the phone to ring,” adds Rozek. “You want it to rank and continue to get the phone to ring. But you also want it to be good enough that you get customers who become brand advocates. If you can’t do that, you need to go back to the drawing board.”

Ramsey says well-performing local content should hit at least one of the following points perfectly:

“It’s unifying. Think of sporting events — it’s one thing in a local place that brings everyone together across different walks of life and puts everyone on the same page. Good local content that gets shared and loved does the same.”

“It’s educational. Local is confusing. Whether explaining history, directions, or tips, people crave good information about places.”

“It’s insider. There is nothing worse than someone talking about a place that they don’t understand. It’s why content ‘only’ locals perform so well.”

As an example, Ramsey uses Movoto, a service provides tools and information for the real estate, as a great example. You can see from the example below that localized pages they create go way beyond what we typically see for city-specific pages, as the content is compelling visually and topically, creating a rich experience visitors are likely to read, share, and link to.

Adds Ramsey, “SMBs should ask every customer where they spend their time online. When they know that, they can start to create content that will appeal to them. The problem that most SMBs have is they get ‘sold’ on products that will update feeds with garbage or create content that doesn’t really relate to their audience.

“Then they give up. I think they have to step back and realize that you can’t outsource strategy. They need to be a part of it. They know their customer and need to be involved in determining how best to reach them.”

What this tells us: Content quality goes beyond good grammar and solid images. Creating a content experience is the optimal goal.

How to make it for your brand: Focus on creating content that is uniquely better than anything you’ve seen or that could be easily created by the competition, no matter how large. Think of the elements that make your area unique and interesting, then work to create content that provides a sensory experience worthy of being talked about and shared.

#2 — Relish the role of local expert

Mary Bowling speaking at Mozcon Local

Each time I do a search for a local service provider and see a large national or regional brand show up, a little of the strategist in me dies insides. Yes, I get that larger brands have the deep pockets to spend on Google Adwords and the domain authority to wreak havoc in the organic search. But come on… A lot of small brands aren’t even trying to compete, and that’s a shame.

“Too often, with small brands, they think they’ll have to hire someone else to create it,” says Bowling. “They don’t realize they are the local authorities, and simply writing what they know can go a long way. Most sales are taken at the location level, but small brands often don’t do enough location-specific content to help their business. Often, with a simple phone call and a fifteen minute interview, we can create a post that’s able to move the needle for their brand.”

Bowling further added: “The goal for the content these small brands create is localized excellence.”

Rob Robillard, aka A Concord Carpenter, provides an excellent example of how local brands can use the expert mantle to own their space. A general contractor, carpenter, and woodworker, Robillard has parlayed his expert and local knowledge into a correspondence gig for the Boston Globe.

Image courtesy of A Concord Carpenter

Says Rozek, “Robillard doesn’t write ‘local’ content as much as he’s a local business owner whose business has benefitted from his having become a noted local authority. Not only does he write for the Boston Globe, he also has a cable show” and a popular video series.

Also, stresses Rozek, different types of businesses will have different goals for their content.

A plumber, for example, is likely less concerned with having a piece of content that draws and engagement and get links; she needs the phone to ring. So having strong city-specific pages that have the ability to rank and get the phone to ring would likely be a more desirable option.

However, if a small brand can do both, they’re better positioned to enjoy success.

“If you have a small site that has good authority and some good links, they’re in the bully pulpit because any page they create is a little more likely to rank,” says Rozek. “The name of the game, then, is to use the other pages of the site to help the city pages rank, since even if they are done well doesn’t guarantee that they rank by themselves. But if you build links to other related pages on the site, those city pages are [likely to see a lift as well in organic reach], which is significant for building authority and engagement, even if the pages the links are pointing to don’t get the phone to ring.”

What this tells us: Don’t focus solely on creating content that gets the phone to ring. Devote some resources to attaining links on other parts of the site.

How to make it for your brand: Spend time building your reputation as an expert of note in your area, then create and share content on your site and other sites you’re able to partner with. Also, while city pages get people in the door, effective outreach can help you build links to other parts of the site that, in turn, provide a boost to the other pages on the site, including the city-specific pages.

Recommended reading: Top-3 Local SEO “Content” Wins for People Who Hate to Write

#3 — Get personal

One of the toughest sells to SMBs is getting them to see the value of making the content they share personal in nature. Makes zero sense when you consider that unique-to-only-you content is the one thing the competition cannot effectively copy.

“Small companies can create more unifying, educational, and insider content, but to do so they have to find the time and money to do it,” says Ramsey, adding, if they do, “Small businesses can blow away competition.”

Mike Ramsey speaking at Mozcon Local

An impressive example of a small brand outpacing all comers is Danburry Barbershop in Provo, Utah. The site has a welcoming, old-school feel and contains images of customers before, during, and after they receive service.

Danburry is getting right to the heart of personalized content by making local folks celebrities of sorts for, well, simply sitting in a chair and getting a trim or a wash. Let’s be honest: Who doesn’t want to show off their new ‘do? You know the customers are sharing the experience with friends and family members while providing the barber shop with ready-made personalized content.

Also, the brand posts images to social media, including Facebook and Twitter, creating a web of personalized content even large brands must envy.

“The Danburry Barbershop is killing it with a subdomain on a .blogspot site simply because he uses his site to showcase his customers,” says Ramsey. “His Facebook feed is also filled with his customer stories and what they do. He is creating a loyal community of unified, educated, and insider Provo people.”

My question to small business owners is, “What’s stopping you from doing the same?” And for those who work with SMBs, either as strategists, SEOs, or content people, we mustn’t shy away from making recommendations of this sort, especially when a brand has the bandwidth and the clientele to make it work.

What this tells us: Look for ways to get personal with your clientele, particularly as it regards the sharing of information involving them.

How to make it for your brand: Think of the people who’ve talked or written about how much they enjoy your product or service. Why not reach out to them for a quick interview, which could take the form of a short video that could posted to Instagram or YouTube or hosted directly on your site?

All you’d need is a few questions to ask them — don’t make it about your brand. Make it about the audience: getting to know them, who they are, etc.

Coworking office spaces have existed for more than a decade around the globe, and I consider it a testament to their growing popularity for start-ups and agencies that I’ve been seeing an increasing number of questions about them in recent times at places like the Moz Q&A forum and elsewhere. The burning question on everybody’s mind is: do coworking locations meet or fall afoul of the official Guidelines for Representing Your Business On Google? This article attempts to provide the most thorough possible answer to this important question.

Google isn’t always completely transparent in their guidelines, so I went for the next best thing. In researching this topic, I communicated with Google My Business Community forum Top Contributor, Colan Nielsen, and want to thank him for conferring about best practices with me.

Virtual vs. coworking offices

Let’s sync up with a couple of quick definitions.

A virtual office offers a mailing address that is not physically occupied by the purchaser. This address is generally not a P.O. box. It typically offers some means of communication via a receptionist, call center and/or voicemail. A virtual office may sometimes offer rental of conference rooms. Virtual offices fail to meet Google guidelines, including:

Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location.

Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible.

Provide your regular customer-facing hours of operation.

If your business rents a temporary, “virtual” office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours.

A coworking office is a space physically occupied by practitioners during stated business hours. In addition to providing desks, rooms, suites, phone booths, and other amenities, coworking spaces often promote collaboration between tenants and offer educational and social events. Many do feature a central reception desk, but participants should carefully weigh whether using such phone numbers is a wise decision.

Properly utilized coworking spaces can be eligible for Google My Business inclusion.

10 tips for coworking local SEO success

Image courtesy of IsaacMao on Flickr

Over the past ten years, coworking spaces have popped up in cities around the world. They can be a good solution for:

Startups with limited funding

Sole proprietors who don’t like the quiet of working in isolation

Home-based business owners who do not want to list their home addresses on the web

Workers in rural areas in need of stable WiFi

Professionals who consistently require office space but who can’t yet pay rent for a full, dedicated building

Individuals looking for particular amenities, such as an address in a desirable location, a green environment (offered by some coworking spaces), or networking opportunities with other coworkers

If your business or your agency’s clients are researching whether a coworking space will help or hinder your local search marketing efforts, be sure any space you consider meets these requirements:

1.) You must physically occupy the space. Any other scenario revokes eligibility.

2.) You must be able to receive postal mail at the coworking space or you won’t be able to receive your Google My Business verification postcard.

3.) Many coworking spaces have a central receptionist who takes calls and messages. You will be better off listing your own phone number on your website and citations, instead — a number that connects directly to you. It’s fine if it’s a cell phone. Invest in a dedicated line for your business and always answer that phone with your business name in greeting. Your clients (and Google) want to know they’ve reached your business if/when they call.

4.) Your Google My Business listing hours of operation must accurately reflect the hours that you are actually at the office.

5.) If you rarely or never meet with clients at the office, but mainly go from the coworking space to meet them at their locations, your business model is a service area business (SAB) and should hide its address in the Google My Business dashboard to be Google guideline-compliant.

6.) If you do not accept walk-in traffic but meet clients by appointment only, again, you should hide your Google My Business address.

7.) Do not generate fake suite numbers. Unless you have been assigned a permanent, dedicated suite number in the office, simply list the main office address on your website and all citations. Concerned about citation consistency? Do a quick lookup with a tool like Check Listing to be sure you aren’t publishing variants of the address around the web.

8.) Even if you occupy different rooms at different times in the coworking space, do not be tempted to create a Google My Business listing for each of them. Create just one listing.

9.) Do not create multiple Google My Business listings for the difference services or goods you offer. You are just one business and are eligible for just one listing.

10.) Local SEO agencies serving clients who use coworking spaces must advise them of the risks and be prepared to act if there’s an accidental GMB listing takedown.

The risks

A business that is staffed during stated business hours, has a dedicated phone number, and, where appropriate, is adhering to Google’s SAB guidelines, should pass Google muster. That being said, a small amount of risk exists in the coworking situation for these two reasons:

Accidental merging

In the past, Google experienced major issues with merging listings with similar details that were at the same or similar addresses. Google appears to have become increasingly sophisticated in parsing out one business from another at a shared location, but merges do still occur.

Should your business or clients experience a merge, first check for shared details apart from the address. A shared phone number appears to be the biggest risk factor, but shared Google categories between one business at a coworking space and a completely different business in the same building would be something to investigate as well. Make the details as you unique as you can and then get on the phone with Google to ask them to help you separate the listings.

Industry history

Coworking spaces are popular with tech start-ups. Unfortunately, SEO and design firms in particular have not always had an easy relationship with Google. In fact, for many years, Google excluded these industries from their local results. It’s believed that this may have been partly owing to Google’s determination that most businesses in these industries operate virtually rather than face-to-face with clients, but Google’s decision may also have been influenced by a high level of spam. Like the locksmith and auto dealership industries, tech industry companies may experience extra Google scrutiny, and a large cluster of business listings associated with a single address could potentially raise a red flag. Google could wrongly determine that a listing pertains to a virtual office rather than a staffed coworking space. If you suspect that a listing takedown has resulted from a mistake like this, your best bet is to fully explain your case on the Google My Business Community forum and ask the Top Contributors there to help.

Given these two provisos, owners and marketers promoting coworking locations should be vigilant in regularly checking up on their Google My Business listings to be sure that nothing has been merged or removed and that no strange ranking drops have suddenly occurred.

Google, the real world, and your business

Image courtesy of Jodimichelle on Flickr

Google’s rate of innovation has been breathtaking over the past two decades, and in local SEO, the pace of change has sometimes been particularly dizzying. One of the challenges I’ve encountered most in the midst of this continual technological commotion relates to Google not always accurately reflecting real-world business scenarios.

One example of this would be the many years it took them to offer a support phone number to the millions of business owners whose bottom lines and very existences were being directly impacted by Google’s local pack results. Another would be Google’s historic treatment of service-area businesses as something of an afterthought rather than a core component of local commerce.

Right now in the real world, economists say that the real rate of unemployment/underemployment in the United States is about 10%, while commercial real estate costs and rental pricing continue to skyrocket, driving would-be entrepreneurs to seek out affordable solutions to jump starting new businesses. Fortunately, this is a case in which Google appears to be keeping up with the times, allowing guideline-compliant coworking companies to be included in the local packs. To these bright new innovators who are working hard to contribute to their local communities, I’m wishing the best of success!

Coworking spaces are a good fit for many local business owners on the way up, and if you’re coworking, our community would love to hear about your experiences and tips in the comments.